[reverie - inbox]

[laughitoff]

TEXT | ACTION | OTHER

Comments

[laughitoff]

You didn't want it. Things have gotten more complicated since then. I don't really know where we stand now. And I don't make much of a friend, anyway.

[he doesn't sound bitter or mad or anything about it, just...tired, too]

[strikingchords]

...

What is a friend, to you?

[laughitoff]

...

[it takes him a long time to answer that one, oddly]

Someone you like the company of, who likes yours back. Someone who stands with you. Someone you want to spend time with.

[strikingchords]

[eventually]

I had thought otherwise.

When first we met.

[laughitoff]

I gathered.

[strikingchords]

Do not take umbrage.

[he also doesn't sound really mad, though that statement is a little sharper, tension coiling up against Wei Wuxian's anticipated offense.]

...

[then he just sounds tired again, though his words are still strongly stated and very direct]

You played around when serious, and mocked others with an earnest face. But, you were not a faithless person. That was my certainty. It would not reconcile.

Rather, I was unsettled. I did not play.

...

Then you were gone.

[laughitoff]

I'm not taking. Anything. Or I'm trying not to.

[closes his eyes, leaning his head against the stone]

I'm right here.

[strikingchords]

[it's quiet on the other side of the grave marker.]

[laughitoff]

[lets it stretch a little before he speaks again...]

[strikingchords]

[after quite a long while, soft again]

Lying is forbidden.

[laughitoff]

Am I lying?

[honest question]

[strikingchords]

Not speaking of you.

[closes his eyes, unseen]

What I said, before.

My opinion did not change.

[laughitoff]

[a bitter little chuckle]

I suppose anything would be a fond memory compared to now.

[strikingchords]

That is not it.

[laughitoff]

Then...?

[strikingchords]

...

[quiet]

That Wei Ying is not a faithless person.

[laughitoff]

...

Not many people would agree with you.

[strikingchords]

They are mistaken.

[Lan Wangji always sounds so sure.]

[laughitoff]

Yet I tried to bite the throat out of someone who's been a paragon of faithfulness, you may remember.

[strikingchords]

...

I had failed as well.

And, I did not let you.

[laughitoff]

...how did you fail, exactly?

[strikingchords]

[the silence after that question stretches again, for a very long time.]

"Someone who stands with you."

...

Who to keep faith with, alone?

[laughitoff]

Where would you have stood with me? How? To what end?

You can't have faith when you're dead.

[strikingchords]

How to guess now?

You did not even know I wished it.

[laughitoff]

[swallows]

I would much rather you were alive and living well.